


Shadow

by Nanyoky



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood, Gen, Ghosts, Homelessness, Human Experimentation, Imaginary Friends, Miscarriage, Orphans, Prompt Fic, Stillbirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 10:52:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14692689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanyoky/pseuds/Nanyoky
Summary: Prompt: "Wanda is born, Pietro is not. Wanda lives a life haunted by her twin brother who never lived, whispered secrets warning her just in time to avoid slipping, avoid bullies, escape the rubble. The whispering voice leads her to the castle and out of the power of the sceptre her never-born twin is created - a half at last made whole. Superpowers optional."





	Shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts).



> Been REAL stuck lately. So a short prompt fill to get back in the game! As always, thanks to EssayofThoughts for the idea and twin musings. <3

Wanda Rozalia Maximoff was an only child. She always knew this. Everyone did. Her parents called her their only treasure. Neighbors in their building called her “the Maximoff child”- or even just “the child,” as she was the only one on the whole floor. She didn’t have other children to play with until her first day of school.

Wanda Maximoff was an only child. But her brother was always with her.

~

Her mother dropped a flower vase the first time she spoke his name.

“Mama- Pietro says we should play outside.”

A crash. Water fanning out over the kitchen linoleum. Shards and chips of yellow glazed ceramic bouncing and skidding across the kitchen. The flowers seemed to stand on end for a moment before flopping amongst the wreckage. Crocuses and poppies gathered up around a collection of tulips and one tall sunflower. Wanda was so enchanted with the image that she almost didn’t hear the slight scream her mother tried to cover by pressing a hand to her mouth.

“Mama?”

“Who- where did you hear that name?”

Wanda blinked at her, then shrugged. “He just said the sun will come out soon, that’s all.”

She overheard her parents talking later that night.

“There must be someone on television. It’s a coincidence.”

“It’s like she knows. It’s like she’s always had him. I can’t-“

“You’re shaken, Mattie. It’s nothing. Nothing- I promise you.”

“Why do they sound so upset?” Wanda did not understand things like this. Things like the candles and incense her mother burned along side the ones for Wanda’s protection, but different. Things like why her father always told her mother “it’s not your fault,” at seemingly random times.

Her twin only shrugged. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

~

Wanda tried not to mention Pietro around her parents, but it was difficult. He was such a natural part of her life. It was like a secret out in the open.

She was helping her father carry clothes to the laundromat when Pietro first saved her.

“No! Stay back! The ambulance!”

“ _Apa_ -“ she grabbed the back of his jacket as they were about to step into the crosswalk. “Wait-“

As she paused, an ambulance tore past, just a meter in front of them, a moment later turning on its sirens.

“Shit-“ her father cursed, then crouched to check on her. “Are you alright? That was very close.”

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t have the damn siren on yet or anything…” he smiled and tugged her braid. “I think you just saved your _Apa’s_ life.”

Wanda only shrugged as they continued on, more carefully this time.

“It wasn’t me. Pietro saw it coming.”

Her father was quiet all the way to the laundromat. Wanda had all but forgotten the incident by the time they were folding the clothes to put back in their baskets.

“Wanda… where did you hear of Pietro?”

“I heard him when we were about to cross the street.”

“No- Wanda- who is Pietro?”

Wanda kept balling her mother’s socks. She still needed the heavy wood stool kept in the corner of the laundromat to reach the counter for folding.

“He is my brother, _Apa_.”

“Who told you that?”

“He did. Or- I know he is. I don’t know. He wasn’t supposed to stay with me, but he did. I’m glad. I think I would miss him, even if we had never met.”

Wanda didn’t understand why her father was silent all the way back to the apartment. Before he opened the door, he hesitated.

“Wanda… what does Pietro look like?”

Wanda frowned as she thought about this. “Like me, _Apa_. We are twins.”

~

They were sitting at dinner and Pietro was more nervous than she had ever seen him.

“I don’t like today,” he announced, sitting so near her they were practically one. “Today is- I don’t want it to happen. I want to stop it but we can’t-“

Wanda glanced up at her parents. She did not speak to Pietro when others were around. She was especially careful now that most children her age had long since abandoned imaginary friends. She wanted to ask what he mean, reassure him, but in a moment, the whole world pitched.

It was strange. She heard nothing. She smelled nothing. It was like watching television with the sound off. One moment, her mother was setting the silverware and giving her a quick wink, the next, everything shook and they were all knocked to the floor. But then there wasn’t as much floor as there should be. And it was tilting. The floor was not straight and she was sliding down it toward the broken hole in the kitchen.

“Wanda!”

Pietro’s voice was the only thing she could hear. In a wild moment, she thought she could feel him. Feel him pulling her up and down the hall to the bedroom.

~

“I don’t like the look of those guys.”

Wanda rolled her eyes as she applied her eyeliner in the dingy bathroom of a bar. So long on the street, she no longer feared for her safety at every turn. Now, she no longer listened to every single one of Pietro’s warnings. Just the ones that didn’t get in the way of a good time.

“I’m sure you don’t, Granny.”

“I’m serious.”

Wanda ran her fingers through her hair rather than respond. She still spoke to Pietro. But she rarely looked at him. It was something like a compromise. A halfway point between loyalty to her lifelong friend and protector, and knowledge that grown women should not see and hear people who were not really there.

“Do you think you would be any _fun_ , Pietro? If you had ever actually been alive, I mean.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. _I_ am the fun twin. _You_ are just stubborn.”

She smiled at her reflection. So he wasn’t all that serious about the young men she had been talking to that morning. Sometimes Wanda thought he only voiced some warnings to make conversation.

“Whatever would I do without you, Brother?”

~

When the weather started to turn in her 23rd year, Pietro grew restless. Wanda often caught his energy. It often helped her. Lighting a fire in her when she needed it. Giving her a level of brashness that fueled her own anger and arrogance when action was necessary. But in times like these, she only grew annoyed with the anxiety that took hold of her for no apparent reason.

“Why do you do this? Just when things are going well?”

The resistance was making progress. Soldiers seemed to be drawing back every day. And more and more were seen at bus and train stations, being shipped home to the states, former bloc countries, and anywhere else that wanted a piece of the small, struggling city state. It was a time of hope, small though it may be. Wanda was no fool. She knew that the soldiers leaving would not mean Sokovia would be free and stable and its citizens happy and safe. She doubted she would live to see such a future.

“Listen- if you’re going to sulk and make me nervous- you might as well tell me what’s bothering you.”

She’d managed to lift a decent wallet earlier in the week and was staying in a small hotel in a quiet part of town. The heat was making her usual alley haunts unbearable with the stink of baking garbage.

“Things are going to change.” He was close behind her while she washed her clothes in the bathroom sink. “I don’t- I don’t know if it will help or…”

“Things are always changing.” She blew a bit of hair out of her face. “This is nothing at all new.”

“ _We_ are about to change.”

Wanda paused in trying to scrub a blood stain from her underwear. “That is something new.”

He led her out to the forest that night. Wanda let herself look at him directly for the first time in years. He’d grown with her. Wanda honestly didn’t know if that was a mark for or against her sanity. But personally, she thought it would be much more dramatic to have a mad woman imagine the three-year-old spirit of her stillborn twin. There was more of a gothic drama in the image of her companion as a wide-eyed toddler than a 23-year-old man in a hooded sweatshirt and muddy sneakers. Half of the time, Wanda got caught up in the logic of how a non-physical form could manage to get his non-physical shoes muddy. The other half of the time, she thought the alternative would be some kind of Hollywood bright light or robes, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to take him seriously that way.

“You should stop being so damned mysterious and tell me what this is all about.”

“I… I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

This silenced Wanda for the rest of her walk.

~

It was painful. But with the pain came an awareness that was unnatural. Normally, pain cut through every thought and feeling a person could have. But here, she was aware of every nerve, every vein, every cell of skin that was boiling. Boiling, but electric. Or more like a chemical fire. Like she must smell like burnt hair and melted bones. Like shrunken heads and pickled livers.

But there was something else. A tearing. A ripping somewhere under her sternum and up through her throat. She screamed, and heard it twice. The tear was in her mind and she knew it could kill her.

“I don’t know if I-“ It was Pietro. It was Pietro but she knew anyone else could hear him this time just as well as she. “I- Wanda!”

His scream was the most terrifying thing she had heard in her life. Because she shouldn’t be hearing it. Because it shouldn’t be echoing through the walls of the lab like a rock falling in a canyon. Because his voice had never echoed before. Because it was only in her own mind. But now, he screamed, and his scream was real. He cried, and tears streamed down her own cheeks as well.

She could hear, under their paired screaming, the scientists and agents of the SHIELD base scuttling around like insects, shouting at one another. Terrified, Wanda realized, as she and Pietro’s eyes met, that he was whole and separate from her. Solid as the ground under them. A shaking, crying young man with her father’s clear eyes and her mother’s thin, but kind mouth.

“W-wanda?”


End file.
